12 Times Van Halen Went Too Far

Busting out of California in 1978 with its first, self-titled album, Van Halen became one of the best-selling and most influential rock bands of the late 20th century. Pioneering the shredding but melodic style that many other groups would imitate in the years to come, Van Halen made heavy metal more pop, and it made pop more heavy metal. It married precision songwriting with attitude and musicianship, showcasing the talents of all four members, from charismatic, squealing lead singer David Lee Roth, the harmonies and low-end of backup vocalist and bassist Michael Anthony, and the otherworldly, two-hand-tapping guitar technique and propulsive percussion of brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen, respectively.

As much memorable and successful music that Van Halen made — including "Dance the Night Away," "Runnin' with the Devil," "Right Now," and "Jump" — it made a lot of headlines, too. Its offstage behavior, members' scandalous personal lives, and tendency toward conflict made the band's story as loud, wild, and messy as Van Halen's records. Here are some times when Van Halen went way over the top, meeting or exceeding its reputation as the most unchained band in rock.

By 1974, the Van Halen brothers had formed the band Van Halen. The foursome spent a couple of years gigging around the Los Angeles area and got one of its earliest and potentially biggest breaks in 1976, when major British hard rock group UFO enlisted Van Halen to serve as its opening act for a show at the Golden West Ballroom, a venue in Norwalk, California.

Van Halen embraced the opportunity and performed admirably, but just after the concert, both career and life almost came to an end for lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen. After he came off stage, a drug dealer offered the guitarist some cocaine, which he immediately ingested. Not 10 minutes later, drummer Alex Van Halen encountered his brother just as he lost consciousness and started suffering what looked like a seizure. Eddie Van Halen was taken to a hospital, where a clearer picture emerged — he'd actually been given PCP, or angel dust, a powerful hallucinogenic. While receiving emergency medical care, Van Halen briefly flatlined before doctors were able to get his heart beating again, thus saving the musician's life.

Destroying hotel rooms became a matter of course for Van Halen as part of the rock star lifestyle, and it was not a behavior that the band adopted over time. The first time it ever top-lined a bill outside of its home state of California, Van Halen committed multiple acts of extensive property damage. The Madison Sheraton Hotel in Wisconsin served as the site of a fire extinguisher fight, and was also victimized by Van Halen's members tearing apart their individual rooms' furniture and taping fish to multiple ceilings.

In 1978, Van Halen's first, self-titled studio album received gold status from the Recording Industry Association of America, signifying sales of 500,000 units. When Van Halen learned of its achievement, the members were on tour in Scotland. To celebrate, the musicians drank a voluminous amount of scotch and then used shoe polish to write the Van Halen logo on hotel walls. The next day, police removed the rock stars from the building and sent them on their way out of the country, although singer David Lee Roth claimed the official reason for the expulsion was the theft of a hotel pillow.

In one of the most tragic instances of fans who died at concerts, 11 people were crushed and trampled to death as thousands of attendees rushed into a concert by the Who at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum in December 1979. Just five months later, with the horrific event still fresh in the minds of venue personnel and local law enforcement, Van Halen also played the Riverfront Coliseum. Seeking to avoid another large-scale disaster on the level of the most tragic nightclub fires in history, authorities weren't going to take any chances. During a performance of "Light Up the Sky," Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth yelled out, "Light 'em up!" That's done on the recorded version of the song, and Roth repeated the line. Some members of the audience took the command literally and took out their lighters to ignite whatever smokeable materials they happened to have on their person at the time.

This was all in violation of the arena's open flame rule. Authorities threw out 100 people from the concert, and arrested 177 attendees on drug possession charges. Roth was arrested, too, and he shelled out a $5,000 bond payment to get out of jail for a charge of encouraging others to violate the fire code.

In 1983, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak attempted a modern-way Woodstock with the multi-day US Festival. Each day was themed to musical genres, and Van Halen headlined "Heavy Metal Day." The gig arrived after three wearying months of touring and a lot of the substance misuse that went along with it for Van Halen. Before the set, lead singer David Lee Roth sat for an interview with MTV's Mark Goodman. "He was drunk and coked up, laughing at every joke he made," Goodman said, according to Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks' book "I Want My MTV." 

After putting it off for three hours, Van Halen finally took the stage, with Roth already quite inebriated. "He was so drunk, slurring and forgetting lyrics and everything," Wozniak wrote in his memoir "iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon" (via Rolling Stone), adding that Roth was "practically falling down onstage."

If you've ever wondered what being a groupie in the 1970s was really like, it may have involved intimate encounters with a member of Van Halen in a hotel room after a successful concert. Throughout the '70s and into the 1980s, Van Halen enjoyed entertaining female fans. One otherwise routine night for the band was captured on videotape, or, as described in "Unchained: The Eddie Van Halen Story": "Graphic, X-rated, homemade pornography featuring the band members and enthusiastic fans."

The tape made its way to one of the band's managers, Marshall Berle, who decided to allow members of Van Halen's label, Warner Bros. Records, to view the footage. The musicians got word and became very offended that someone in their inner circle would embarrass them in such a way, and so they decided to wage a campaign of revenge against Berle. With another manager, Noel Monk, members of Van Halen busted into Berle's business office in Hollywood. Then they systematically removed anything and everything with a Van Halen mention or connection. That included RIAA gold discs the band had gifted Berle, along with various memorabilia and merchandise.

In the 1980s, when Van Halen was at its commercial peak, having become a household name and enjoying MTV-favorite status, its relentless touring schedule took it to Seattle. While in town, the group made an unannounced visit to KISW, a rock radio station that frequently played its records. The hard-partying Van Halen showed its appreciation with a number of gifts, including a cake, bottles of champagne, a large and varied amount of drugs, and female exotic dancers. "It was just an entourage of people following them in," former KISW disc jockey Beau Phillips told the Houston Press. "And all of a sudden clothes start coming off and women start grinding and the music goes up."

Van Halen intended to throw a party, and it did, extending the festivities to the broadcast booth and the airwaves. Members of the band took over the studio for about three hours. "David Lee Roth is getting more and more provocative on the phone as people are calling in," Phillips recalled. "I was worried that the FCC was going to make a surprise visit. And there was cake all over the floor!"

In 1984, MTV held a contest with the prize being a "Lost Weekend with Van Halen." The winner: 20-year-old Kurt Jefferis of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, who brought along his 19-year-old friend Tom Winnick. Giveaway promos promised debilitating levels of partying, and Van Halen delivered. Flown in a private jet to Detroit, they lodged in a room at the Hotel Pontchartrain filled with Van Halen merchandise and pornography, and then went to Van Halen's dressing rooms at the Cobo Arena. The pair met Eddie Van Halen, whose wife, Valerie Bertinelli, gave the underage contest winners cocktails and shots. "We were not without a drink for the rest of the time," Winnick told Vulture. 

After watching the concert from prime seats, Jefferis got pulled onstage to drink whiskey, get sprayed with champagne, and have his face dunked in a sheet cake. After MTV's camera crew left, the real partying backstage began: Jefferis and Winnick enjoyed steak, lobster, marijuana, a tremendous amount of alcohol, cocaine inhaled off of David Lee Roth's fingernail, and the attention of a very welcoming Van Halen groupie. 

The second day, not much happened, as Roth was sick and needed medical attention. Jefferis was so hungover he had to pretend to drink the malt liquor foisted upon him by Alex Van Halen. The "Lost Weekend" culminated in a dressing room food fight.

A surprise presenter at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards was Van Halen, but its original front man, David Lee Roth, rather than its lead singer of the past decade, Sammy Hagar. After Hagar declined to participate in recording new songs for the "Twister" soundtrack, Roth stepped back in as Van Halen's vocalist on a temporary basis. At the MTV event, Roth assumed his role as the band spokesperson and quickly went off script. In front of a visibly irritated Eddie Van Halen, Roth knocked Michael Anthony off the mic to deliver jokes and cultural commentary: "It used to be, 'I want my MTV!' and now it's like, 'Gimme your f***ing MTV or I'll blow your head off, man.'" Van Halen muscled Roth away to give an award to Beck. During the acceptance speech, Roth continued to mug and dance around.

While this all portended a true reunion, it didn't happen. "I felt his onstage antics were embarrassing and disrespectful to Beck," Eddie Van Halen told MTV (via Rolling Stone), adding that backstage Roth grew annoyed when Van Halen explained that not only did he have an upcoming hip surgery, but that all the band needed Roth for was a couple of songs on a greatest hits album and their videos. "He goes, 'Tonight's about me man and not your f***ing hip.'" The two nearly came to blows until a member of the band's staff got in the way.

Van Halen started to force out founding bassist Michael Anthony in the late 1990s. His contributions were scarce on the 1998 album "Van Halen III," and his participation in a 2004 summer reunion almost didn't happen. "Ed really didn't want me to be part of it," Anthony told Van Halen News Desk. He negotiated a deal with the band's management that entitled him to a smaller cut than that received by other members of Van Halen. "I kind of sucked it up a bit and I made less money," Anthony said.

Anthony believes that the nastiness directed at him and former Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar stemmed from their extracurricular activities. Hagar opened a nightclub and a tequila brand both called Cabo Wabo, named after a 1988 Van Halen song. "I think the club rubbed [Eddie] and his brother, Alex, the wrong way," Anthony told New York. Anthony, who stayed friends and collaborators with Hagar after his contentious exit from Van Halen, also manufactured a product, Mad Anthony's Hot Sauce. "The Van Halens were not okay with my hot sauce," Anthony said.

In 2006, Eddie Van Halen announced that he'd officially fired Anthony and hired a replacement on bass guitar: his then 15-year-old son, Wolfgang Van Halen. Around the time that Van Halen toured in the summer of 2007, the group also quietly endeavored to remove Anthony's name from the songwriting credits on numerous old songs, thus reducing his entitlement to royalties.

After leaving in 1996 in just one of Van Halen's several messy breakups, Sammy Hagar returned eight years later for a blockbuster reunion tour. Owing to lingering perceived hostilities from guitarist Eddie Van Halen, the singer had a horrible time. "What happened on that reunion tour in '04 was some of the most miserable, backstabbing, dark crap I've ever been involved with in my whole life and I would never go through that again with anybody for any amount of money or any amount of fame and fortune," Hagar said in an interview with music journalist Sally Steele. Hagar tried to leave the tour entirely after 40 shows, but didn't because he feared the lawsuit that would result from breaching his contract.

The months-long jaunt came to an end in Tucson, Arizona, in November 2004. "It was the worst show we'd ever done in our lives. Eddie played so bad," Hagar claimed in his memoir "Red" (via Ultimate Classic Rock). The concert, the tour, and that era of Van Halen tragically came to a dramatic conclusion when the virtuoso experienced a destructive, emotional breakdown on stage. The visibly intoxicated guitarist stopped playing in the middle of a song to smash his instrument, tearfully yelling to the audience, "You don't understand!"

Van Halen was dormant as a recording act in the mid-2000s, leaving Eddie Van Halen open to collaboration with other prominent musicians. In the mid-2000s, guitarist Wes Borland departed the rap-rock group Limp Bizkit, one of the most hated bands in music, and an employee of the group's label arranged a meeting between front man Fred Durst and Eddie Van Halen. They got together at Durst's home in Beverly Hills, and the fruitful jam session descended into a house party. When someone started smoking marijuana, it bothered Van Halen so much that he left in such a hurry that he didn't bother to pack up and take the various guitars, amplifiers, and other pieces of equipment he'd hauled over to Durst's house.

The next day, Van Halen tried to arrange a time when he could grab his stuff. Durst didn't answer the calls, which upset Van Halen to the point where he took a more aggressive approach. He'd recently purchased an assault vehicle at an auction, and he drove it to Durst's home. When Durst opened the front door, he was greeted by Van Halen, holding out a gun that was pointed at his face. An employee of Durst quickly got all of Van Halen's tech together while the guitarist smoked a cigarette and never lowered his weapon.

In 2004, Eddie Van Halen decided that he wanted his creative process to be chronicled in as minute detail as possible, so he hired music photographer and filmmaker Andrew Bennett to be his personal documentarian. While at times he recorded Van Halen 24 hours a day, and even lived in the guitarist's home in 2006 and 2007, Bennett never produced a documentary. Instead, Bennett self-published a photo-rich memoir of the period called "Eruption in the Canyon: 212 Days & Nights With the Genius of Eddie Van Halen." It wasn't a glowing, loving portrayal, either. Bennett covered Van Halen's many binge-drinking incidents, as well as the time that the guitarist held a gun to the documentarian's head for 30 minutes following an emotionally fraught meeting with former bandmate David Lee Roth.

Van Halen reportedly never paid Bennett a promised $250,000, and so in addition to the book, the chronicler uploaded some of his video footage to the internet. Van Halen filed legal paperwork to get a judge to prevent the release of any more material, claiming ownership of anything Bennett shot. "I'm more confused, disappointed, and hurt than angry," Bennett told Billboard. "Ed gave me his word. He saw how hard I worked and then he f***** me over. That's what shocks me. That's not the person I know."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues or needs help with mental health, contact the relevant resources below:

• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

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• The Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.